THE SUBTERRANEAN RIVER MID R 01. 253 



biologist can liold it with any consistency. Over and over again 

 such a result was predicted of education. As she was not edu- 

 cated out of womanhood, so she can not be metamorphosed by 

 politics, and will remain, when acknowledged as an individual, 

 still the counterpart of man. 



THE SUBTERRANEAN RIVER MIDROI. 



By Dk. PAUL RAYMOND. 



THE investigations in palethnology which I have been pur- 

 suing for several years in the departments of Gard, Ar- 

 dfeche, and Vaucluse, France, have led me to explore the subter- 

 ranean cavities, avens, caverns, and rivers which furrow the 

 region of the Gausses. In this way I discovered, in 1894, the sub- 

 terranean river of Midroi, and found it so curious that I am im- 

 pelled to describe it for those who are interested in explorations 

 of the depths of the earth, The river Midroi is situated on the 

 left bank of the canon of the Ardeche, at the beginning of the 

 defile of la Madeleine. Its mouth, marked by the rich vegetation 

 that clothes the rocks around, is at a level of about twenty-feet 

 above the average height of the river. Starting to explore this 

 river on August 28, 1895, and carrying our instruments, our photo- 

 graphic apparatus, and our boat, the Microbe, with considerable 

 difficulty across the slippery clay bottom, we passed into a gallery 

 about thirteen feet long and ten feet high, contracting in some 

 places to a few inches, which offered nothing of special interest. 

 About one hundred and fifty yards farther on we came to a lake, 

 where my progress had been stopped in a visit made to this 

 place the year before. Launching the Microbe, we proceeded on 

 our way to the unknown. We advanced between walls smooth 

 and polished by the water upon this new Styx, which had a 

 uniform depth of about ten feet (Fig. 1). After a few turns the 

 lake became narrower ; an arcade, and then a second, rose before 

 us — the Gate of Mycenae {Porte de Mycenes), as we called them, 

 standing at the entrance to the second gallery. This was the end 

 of the lake, and for the present of our sail. Making the boat fast 

 at the first arcade, we lifted ourselves upon the second, strad- 

 dling the terminal part of the lake where the slightest slip would 

 have thrown us into it, and entered the second gallery among 

 slender stalactite columns, finely notched on the edges {stalagmite 

 des crenelures). A change of direction, and we were in the hall of 

 the Dome {Escaliers des Stalagmites and Salle de Bifurcation), the 

 vault of which is more than thirty feet high. The gallery forks 

 here, one part going due north, the other part opening opposite. 



